I am trying to get my head around the permaculture 'stacking' theory - and thinking about it, you do see large trees growing as part of a hedgerow quite happily.

But would our newish hybrids cope with this arrangement? The 'traditional' gardening books all suggest they need spacing of about 2.5m - is this just from another tree, or should I take this to mean from the nearest hedge plant?

Confused

"A pretty face is fine, but what a farmer needs is a woman who can carry a pig under each arm"

You can grow quite a lot of fruit as cordons up fences rather than as trees, this is an old idea and I have seen it in lots of old gardens, and you can plant things right up to them as there is no shading at all, my friend grew all her blackcurrants, gooseberries, redcurrants as a cordon as well which worked brilliantly, I have got some blackcurrant cuttings I am now going to grow as a single stem. Dwarf trees are quite precious and don't like competition. I bought all my apples on MM106 as they are growing in very bad soil and they have gone quite mad now, I think they would be alright in a hedge. Berries are better hedgerow plants really.

Thanks GA - I didn't explain very well, what I meant was I plan to have an edible hedge of all of the things you suggest, but also want some fruit trees - so rather than space them away from the hedge, to save space I thought I could possibly grow them in the hedge.

I could then trim the hedging plants but not the trees obviously, so that one day the trees have access to light (being bigger than the hedge).

So it was more whether they can all live side by side happily, or whether fruit trees need more space?

"A pretty face is fine, but what a farmer needs is a woman who can carry a pig under each arm"